How to live an abundant life on a minimum wage

I have been curious about the mentality of abundance throughout my working and wandering ever since I realized I did not want a typical middle class life of financial struggle getting in the way of feeling alive.

My motto is ‘living the dream’, and I do just that, every damn day, without actually spending a lot of money. My life feels big and full, enriched with the things that juice me up, saturated with experiences and items I value the most.

We all have financial freak outs and a hard time believing in the unlimited source of money that circulates the world because of how we are conditioned to view the system. Our feelings toward money are usually fear based and with the help of marketing we believe we have to work hard to feel worthy of something you ‘deserve’, and save up to splurge. This isn’t sustainable if you want to live in abundance.
You have to be ready to shake your beliefs up if you want to live a richer life.

Believe me – I have my days where I can act like scrooge and get caught up in the anxiety-driven lack mode, but it doesn’t take too long before I realize that my life is a direct reflection of what I am feeling inside, and if I worry about money, life is going to give me something to worry about.

Last year, I worked in hospitality for just over 4 months, and managed to explore Canada in a van for six weeks, road trip half a lap of Australia without working along the way and spend a month backpacking in Bali. I’m not the kind of traveler that acts penniless either – I adore my health food, willingly shout others and prefer to stay somewhere I feel safe over a crusty dorm bed. In between the travels, I’m not at home saving on the weekends eating tinned beans. I say a big fat yes to dinner parties, nights out and beautiful things if they light up my soul.
I do not save life for a later date.

Here are some ways I found clarity of what my ‘dream life’ looks like and how I got to living it every day ::

+ Define what ABUNDANCE is for you. Get clear on your priorities. Notice when you list the things you believe to mean abundant, (the expensive dress, the swanky dinner date, the newest phone) the underlying desire behind them (to feel seen, connected or worthy). For me, travelling feels abundant because I want to feel free and adventurous, and health is my wealth because I need my body to be energized and alive for all the experiences I want to have!

+ Write down everything you currently spend money on. Take the time and honesty with yourself to do this. It is scary but totally liberating to see exactly what our stream of dollars supports. Does the list reflect how you really want to live? Split it up in to categories: necessities (rent, fuel, phone, food) and ‘everything else’. Go even deeper and check the last two weeks of your bank statement for confrontation of where your money is going. (I promise I am going somewhere with this…)

+ Alter your list to better suit your definition of abundance. This could be as simple as organizing yourself to save on weekly spends such as groceries, and shopping at the farmers market instead of getting take out and going to the shops every few days (and you’re now supporting local people rather than big corporations, double win for money karma!) Have a look at different phone plan options, car insurance, and the other ‘big’ spends. After those, it’s up to you to choose what really matters.

+ Work on your money mindset. This can be a tricky transition if you have been believing for a long time that money does not grow on trees, or rich people are greedy, or money is evil. There are so many resources out there to gently change your attitude to money through positive affirmation. THIS meditation and THIS post are favourites of mine to get in to the swing of things. Money will be around for our entire lifetime, doesn’t it make sense to start feeling good about it?

+ LIVE IN ABUNDANCE, TODAY. What do you really want? Time to yourself? To relax? To feel good? To feel connected? To feel free? You can literally have all of those today. Choose where you give your time, where you put your money and choose to prioritise your values over anything else. As an experiment, if this kind of radical self love and trust is very new to you, try asking yourself the above question and waiting eagerly for the answer. Most of the time, what we need is so simple and we make excuses. Not this time. Take that nap, go buy the sexy underwear, have a long cup of tea uninterrupted, run a bath. Abundance!

An abundance mindset may not happen for you overnight, so be gentle with this practice of transforming your belief system around money and work toward accepting your current situation as exactly where you need to be. Realize that if you are reading this you are probably richer than half the world, so that in itself is a powerful truth to start creating some gratitude for your wealth. You were born to experience, express, feel and live fully alive, not be a player in a controlling system. Carve your own definition of freedom and start living it.